In Her Book “Staying True,” Jenny Sanford Dishes with Dignity

If revenge is a dish best measured in book sales, Jenny Sanford will be dining well: just days after publication, “Staying True,” her memoir of love and betrayal in the South Carolina Governor’s mansion, is a bestseller. But at a luncheon hosted by More magazine today, Sanford firmly downplayed any notion of getting even, speaking of her straying ex-spouse with almost superhuman courtesy and kindness.

Faced with a situation that, as More editor in chief Lesley Jane Seymour notes, would make “most women crawl under the covers and hide forever,” Sanford refused to take responsibility for her husband’s actions, emerging with her dignity intact and providing, Seymour believes, “a role model for women who have been there — or might be there.”

That gives the table pause. But thoughts soon shift to a lighter subject: Who will play the lean and lovely Jenny in the inevitable TV movie? Dana Delaney? Courtney Cox? Sanford herself shudders at the thought of anyone playing her at all. She did watch “The Good Wife” — the CBS series inspired by Silda Spitzer, Elizabeth Edwards and a slew of other wronged wives — once. One of her boys also watched it, “and he said, ‘Can we turn?’”

Unlike Silda (or “The Good Wife’s” Alicia Florrick), Sanford did not stand by Mark’s side when he made his bizarre, rambling confession that far from hiking the Appalachian Trail, he was in Argentina with his “soul mate” lover. Did she learn from Silda’s humiliating appearance? Did she think of Silda when her turn came?

“You guys think about it more than I do,” Sanford said. “I don’t think of myself as a political wife.” Besides, she wasn’t even in the same city, and he didn’t ask her to join him: “I had known about the affair for six months by then. I don’t know when Mrs. Spitzer found out. My heart goes out to her. Every situation is different.”

What would seem to be the same, she reckons, is the way politicians end up disconnected from reality, not only from “what matters,” but from day to day life. Governors don’t go to the store or put gas in the car. “Even my kids are learning how to become normal again,” she said of her four sons. “They’re learning to pick up the phone. In the mansion, a security guard answered it. And a guy with a gun,” she added, ”is not very good at taking your messages.”

How did she avoid the pampered pol trap? Her days at Lazard Freres, where she became a rare female vice president in her twenties, got her used to big egos. “Wall Street influenced how I see success,” Sanford said. “Income there is a notch on your belt. Politics is the logical next step.”

Take for example Steve Rattner. Reminded that Rattner remarked that he always thought Jenny was “dating down” with Mark, she rolled her eyes. “Well, he’s a big Democrat. He’s not going to like Mark.”

And make no mistake: Jenny is a big Republican, just like Mark. She still admires his fiscal conservatism — gets almost gushy when she talks about it, in fact, even though that same frugality extended big time into their marriage. In “Staying True,” she tells how, one birthday, he gave her a picture of half a bike. At Christmas, she got a picture of the second half — and a second-hand, $25 bike. (“Get yourself a new bike!” Jenny’s mother ordered post-scandal. “That will show him!”)

Another telling anecdote in a book filled with “What was she thinking?” revelations has Mark ordering a necklace for Jenny, then insisting she send it back when it arrived, because it didn’t look worth the price. “I am wearing a necklace he didn’t take back,” she said, fingering a chain adorned with seed pearls and green glass, “and matching earrings, too.”

Bolstered by the many e-mails she received offering support and sharing similar stories, Sanford says she thought she could “help women cultivate character and faith” by writing of her experience. “I didn’t want to write a mean book,” she said. Even now, she defends Mark as a “good man who lost his way.” Certainly, she adds, “He was not a Don Juan—he was clumsy with women.”

Right now, she is concentrating on her sons, ages 11 to 17, who are being raised on Sullivan’s Island, S.C., which she calls “Mayberry by the sea.” In a scene eerily reminiscent of “The Good Wife,” she caught one boy studying a map of Argentina on his computer. Why? Writing about his life for a school project, he was presenting this as his “greatest challenge in life.”

So there you have it: Hunting, self-reliance, fiscal conservation all rolled into one. Though Jenny is adamant that she herself will not run for public office, her estranged husband would be—or at least should be—proud.

And by the way, has Mark read Jenny’s book? “No,” she says. “He knows the story.”

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